even adults enjoy a "to go" cup

i love a good dinner party. and monday night drinks spin the week right.

try to remember that time in september

i have been a little down recently ~ but if you actually read my ululating, you know that i am a constant swing of craziness.

so, in lieu of a potential future trip to my other home, i decided to go back and try to save some of my plethora of musings from my 2007 trip to africa. at the time i was a myspace devotee. now that myspace has all but devolved, i've transported some of those thoughts over here. the shifting sands of the interwebs weren't able to hold everything. what will our future generations do? will they forget us entirely with no record to show for ourselves? ah well.

so for the babies i may never have, or at least for my niece...

June
July
the kili climb
August
September
October

art

upon waiting for the 1 train.

there's a cool breeze teasing the edge of my miniskirt as i wait on the above-ground train platform- a treasured rarity in the depths of summer in the city.
i can see across the harlem river from here.
there is a small peak of rolling green hills amid the high rises which, seduced by the momentary fresh air, reminds me of italy.
which reminds me that my passport has just expired. damn.

but, i can't bear to sink below that film of disappointment. so i brush it aside, closing my eyes and turning my face into the beating sun.

here and now i will relish living in a destination city, even if the language is my own and the gleam has long faded and my dreams sit dusty in plastic storage crates under my one-side mussed bed.

the sky is bright blue. the color richer through my fancy sunglasses, a deeply perfect robin's egg.
it is surprisingly quiet for a 9am work day. the truck grumblings muffled somehow. a siren does a quick crescendo, but just as quick fade out, leaving only the light chatter that beats below the city, a heartbeat that never stutters.

there is no train in sight. unsurprisingly. i'm going to be late. the mismanagement of public transit is just another truth to be swallowed down on a pretty day.
but it does mean the tracks extend unblemished into the distance, curving enticingly away.

how many pictures of roads from all over the world are scattered in my life?

each curving forward. a promise, as all roads are, of paths ahead and paths behind.

what's another year?

there is something about being an actor that seems to keep people, well at least some of us, in a perpetual state of "growing up". you're not really a child any more, but you have to be able to play. if you lose your ability to play, i don't think you can be a very good actor. without playing, how do you take risks?

then again, maybe it's just me. me refusing to take on the responsibilities of being an adult.  it's not that i want to go back to high school--though kindergarten was pretty fun. it's more that i just don't see myself in that locked down world that being "an adult" seems to represent in my mind. i'm still moody and crazy and wear funny clothes, even when i'm trying to be "wise".

oh well. :)

facebook, friends, and growing young

what did we ever do before facebook? (i mean other than call each other, write letters, and have coffee)

it always surprises me when someone is getting married, having babies, and sadly even divorced. especially when i think of that person as i remember them- lounging in the cool coffee shop, scrunched in a hot school bus, slip-and-slidin' down my lawn...

yet another of my good friends is having a baby, i've just discovered, and it makes me miss crowding in her car along with too many others. afternoons spent at her house. even the "abs of steel" we did for a few months. it's hard to wrap my brain around.

so my introspection for the day: before the quasi-closeness of technology, did people suffer this conflict of past and present? i imagine one kept in touch and thus your perception of a person changed as life changed for both. or, you didn't. and they were relegated into anecdotes and memories and maybe old journals.

don't get me wrong-- i like the technological updates and sometimes it really does help you reestablish someone you shouldn't have lost. it's especially helpful for someone like me who is absolutely terrible on the phone. but i'm also a self indulgent wack job.

a couple of friends have recently been plagued with ex-partners and friends suddenly showing up back in their lives. live, in person. but me, i find myself half expecting a 15 year old to walk in the door.

then again, maybe it's not such a terrible thing. maybe it's nice to have these other versions of ourselves walking around, fresh in someone's head. i may be different than i was 8 years ago, even 3 years ago, but knowing that for some old friends, that's the me they carry around--well i guess i like that. maybe the versions of you that follow me around will help me remember the versions of me.

no i have not been drinking this morning. kisses.

it is all a mystery

it is all a mystery

or a...

frustrating days.

there is lots of work for me to finish before i leave the country. more than i will possibly be able to finish, though i will try my best. 

nearly every person, wazungu and tanzanian alike, want to know why i am leaving...don't i like it? shouldn't i be getting married? shouldn't i stay home here? when am i coming back?

i already miss my friends here, and sadly we all begin to pull away--protecting ourselves from what we have come to know as the incessant ebb and flow of people in and out of town. i want to get angry, find fault, find a reason to move on.  easier to deny friendships, than admit we might miss each other.  but that is my own fault, right? usually, you just don't bother memorizing a person's name if they stay under a couple months. and here i am, staying on  for practically forever and then suddenly up and leaving with no warning.

we are a community of transients, especially those of us in our 20s and 30s. if you don't have a spouse and baby, and even when you do, few wazungu, expats, or half-tanzanians commit to putting roots in a place like moshi.  we form friendships, maybe lovers, but hardly with a clear understanding of roots and the future.  everything is for the now.

for the moment.

but when you leave the now, where do you go? and who do you go with?